Glee: The Beginning - Sophia Lowell

Glee - The Beginning by Sophia Lowell was released on 5th August 2010 by Headline and it is 218 pages long. Thanks to Headline for sending me a copy for review!

All great performances deserve a warm-up! Enroll early at McKinley High--before New Directions was even a glimmer in Mr. Schuester's eye. When did Rachel first decide Finn was more than just a jock? When did Puck and Quinn start their secret romance? And how did the fledgling Glee Club function without a fearless leader? Hint: It wasn't exactly a perfect melody.

Break out the gold stars and refill the slushies: It's time to find out what happened to all your favorite characters before the show-mance began.

What I thought
I have been a massive fan on Glee since it first started so I was both curious and excited to see how it would be transferred into a book and prequel. There was a lot of good reviews for it on Twitter so I was starting to think that it was done really well. I was unfortunately left not completely loving it though.

Glee: The Beginning really accentuates the personalities of the main characters and because of this, I could imagine them as they are on the TV show. I liked being able to picture each character in my head and after watching them for so long, their antics in the book fit really well with how I would have imagined them to behave. Rachel’s quirky personality and eagerness to become a star came across really well and I loved some of the things she did to try and get herself better known in the school. I do wish Sue had made a few more appearances though because she was just as funny and mean in this story and I loved seeing that she has never really changed.

One of the most interesting things about this book for me was learning about certain events that have only been hinted at so far throughout season 1. I finally got to know what Rachel’s two Dads are called and the kind of friendship that Mercedes and Kurt had. The best part of Glee: The Beginning was finding out how Quinn and Puck’s affair started and when Rachel began to notice Finn. I really saw a different side to all four of these characters because of this and it just made me love Puck even more.

My biggest problem with the plot was that certain things didn’t match up with the timeline of the TV series. For instance, Rachel had to audition before Mr Schuster for her place in Glee Club in the pilot episode but in the book, Kurt speaks to her about being in Glee and is already a member by the end. The first thing that really stood out to me though was the use of Usher’s recent song OMG. Considering that the book is set before the TV series I would have thought that older songs would have been used to keep the timeframe of the book in line with the TV series. Another thing was their first performance. I loved their first performance of Push It on TV but again, this didn’t match up with what was in the book. The inconsistencies aren’t all of the way throughout the story but some were big enough for me to take a lot of notice of.

Glee: The Beginning is a fun book and a quick and easy read. No, I didn’t love it but there were still some really good things about it. I think I will still read any other Glee books that are brought out just to find out some of the interesting going ons but I doubt I would buy them myself.